Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Steve Jobs steps down from the CEO position at Apple stating: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s C.E.O., I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs wrote. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”

I know all the haters probably feel that now Apple may have the ability to "ease up" on some of their policies and make a better experience for their customers even though Jobs will remain as Chairman of the Board. What do the Apple fans say?

Apple has provided flawed visual evidence of similarities between the iPhone 3G and Samsung's Galaxy S smartphones to the District Court in The Hague, an investigation by Webwereld.nl, a Dutch IDG publication, has found. This time, a picture of a Galaxy S smartphone has been resized to match an iPhone 3G.

During the court hearing last week, Samsung's lawyer, Bas Berghuis of Simmons and Simmons, claimed that Apple has been "manipulating visual evidence, making Samsung's devices appear more similar to Apple's." Berghuis, however, did not show evidence of his allegations.

Webwereld's investigation found that one of the pictures provided by Apple as evidence in the Dutch case is either wrong or manipulated.

Hey...wait a minute!

Size Misrepresented
On page 77 of the complaint, seen by Webwereld, Apple's lawyers have provided a picture of an iPhone 3G next to a Samsung Galaxy S as "an example of the similarity relevant to copyrights."

But the picture Apple submitted of the Galaxy S is inaccurate and does not match the real Galaxy S. Further analysis has confirmed this assessment. The Galaxy S, introduced in The Netherlands in July 2010, is both taller and wider than the iPhone 3G. According to Samsung, the dimensions of the Galaxy S are 122.4 by 64.2 millimeters. The iPhone 3G measures 115.5 by 62.1 millimeters. In the text, Apple confirms that the Galaxy S has "some non-identical elements, such as the slightly larger dimensions."

But the picture of purported Galaxy S has been resized about 6 percent, making the Galaxy S appear smaller and more similar to Apple's phone. The height of the purported Galaxy S that Apple displays matches the iPhone exactly. The aspect ratio has not been measurably altered.

Apple also provided an unknown number of other pictures of Samsung's smartphones and tablets side-by-side with its own in separate productions, which were not available for inspection. There's only one picture of an iPhone side-by-side with a purported Galaxy S in the complaint itself.

A legal expert on intellectual property cases, who declined to be named, asserted that when pictures are filed both in the complaint and in separate productions, those in the complaint would be considered more important. Visual evidence presented there typically indicates that the plaintiff wants to emphasize its significance, he said.

Similar Action with Tablet
Earlier this week, Webwereld uncovered a similar case in Dusseldorf, Germany, where Apple has also filed faulty evidence in court. Apple's German complaint contains a picture of an alleged Galaxy Tab 10.1, resized and its aspect ratio distorted so that it resembles the iPad 2 very closely.
Mark Krul, a lawyer at the Dutch firm WiseMen and a specialist in IT and intellectual property law, is astonished by the findings. "It surprises me that for the second time incorrect presentations of a Samsung product emerge in photographic evidence filed in litigation," he said. "This is not appropriate and undermines Apple's credibility both inside and outside the court room." Krul said that litigating parties are required by Dutch law to provide "complete and truthful" evidence to the judge, adding that this is even more imperative when infringement on design and copyrights is alleged. Krul noted a crucial difference with the German case, in which the judge granted a preliminary "ex parte" injunction, without a hearing or an opposition brief from the defendant. In The Hague, Samsung's lawyers lodged an opposition and flagged the flawed evidence.
Krul doesn't presume that the examples of the faulty evidence are malice on the part of Apple's lawyers. "But Apple has certainly some explaining to do, if only to clear itself from the appearance of improper behavior," he said. Webwereld has briefed Apple and its Dutch counsel, Rutger Kleemans of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, on the results of the investigation and submitted questions to clarify the issue. He declined to respond. Samsung also declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

The complaint is only available for viewing at the court in The Hague. Due to these restrictions, Webwereld has made a rendering of Apple's flawed evidence to present the findings visually.
In the Dutch case, Apple seeks a ban on all Galaxy smartphones and tablets in the European Union (E.U), including a complete recall of stock by European distributors and resellers. The court in the Hague will rule on September 15. At the hearing last week, Judge Edger Brinkman stated that if he grants any injunctions against Samsung's products, they would take effect no sooner than Oct. 13.
In Germany on Tuesday, the Dusseldorf District Court changed its preliminary injunction granted last week that prohibited Samsung from selling the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in all E.U. countries except for The Netherlands.
The court, citing uncertainties about jurisdiction, changed its ban to allow Samsung to sell the product in all E.U. countries except for Germany. The first in Dusseldorf.

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I would say if this happened once you could chalk it up to mis-communication or blame it on an individual lawyer gone rogue but twice? Come on now Apple.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Yesterday Apple released the first update to OS X Lion, but people who expected the first update to bring about major changes or fixes to problems that developed with the initial release of the OS may have to wait for a future release. The update is a relatively small one, at around 17MB for some people when downloaded through Software Updaate, but around 80MB as a standalone updater. For now the updater is just a minor bugfix that addresses some of the issues people have had with Lion, and enhanced fixes will likely come with the more hyped 10.7.2 update, which was mentioned as being in development before the 10.7.1 update was even discussed or released.

The updater file contains updated graphics drivers and disk handling tools like the disk image mounter and file server core services. It also includes an update to iChat and some of its system components like the quicklook and spotlight plug-ins for the program.

While the update does contain a number of new graphics drivers for all supported chipsets (Intel, Nvidia, and ATI), unfortunately one of the prominent issues of MacBook systems waking to black screens does not seem to have been fixed. The problem has changed for some users to show a direct kernel panic instead of merely the black screen, but for others the black screen still happens as it always did. If this update was to address this issue, then it may suggest the problems could be based in hardware. Some users who have had this issue have noted it no longer appeared when they've had their system's logic boards replaced.

If this problem persists for your system, then your best bet for now is to use the utility gfxCardStatus to prevent your system from switching GPUs, which appears to be a root cause for the problem. You might also try using a general maintenance tool like OnyX (Lion version) or Lion Cache Cleaner to clear the boot caches and force the system to refresh them based off of the new Kext files that have been included with the latest OS update.

Besides graphics, an ongoing issue with Lion that still is not resolved is Wi-Fi connections being dropped (see here, here, and here) when waking from sleep. Users will wake their systems and the Wi-Fi signal will suddenly disappear, resulting in network programs claiming you are not connected to the Internet. While for some people with this problem the signal will come back, for others it appears to drop continually for a while after waking. The updater package does not contain any Wi-Fi related updates, so it is unexpected that this behavior should change.

If you are experiencing Wi-Fi dropouts, a couple of things you can try to clear the issue is to reset the system's PRAM or SMC, and also create a new Location in the network system preferences that only contains a Wi-Fi configuration and no other ports (Ethernet, Bluetooth, Firewire, etc.).

The last issue that does not seem to be addressed is poor battery life in some of Apple's laptop systems. Some people have claimed that their batteries have diminished to less than half their original operating times after upgrading to Lion. While changes in power handling are expected with any update or upgrade, batteries should not change this drastically. As with Wi-Fi issues, very little of the 10.7.1 update appears to be to any system services and features that might be adversely affecting battery life. Your best bet for now if you are experiencing diminished battery life is to try resetting your computer's SMC, calibrating your battery, disabling unneeded system services like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and sharing services in addition to running your system on integrated graphics if needed (set this in the Energy saver system preferences, or use the utility gfxCardStatus to manually switch).